


Worth Your Weight In Gold

by Ivecygnus



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Caring Hannibal Lecter, Character Development, Dark Will Graham, Developing Relationship, Domestic, Eventual Happy Ending, First Kiss, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter is a Cannibal, Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mild Smut, Non-Graphic Violence, Open Relationships, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Sassy Will Graham, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Tension, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:07:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29965431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivecygnus/pseuds/Ivecygnus
Summary: After Hannibal rescues Will, the detective finds sanctuary for his smoldering repentance in a local church. The memory is still present through the disfiguring scarring while emotional wounds open up once again when they reunite under unfortunate circumstances, making both of them turn to vicinity and intimacy to fix what time couldn't.Will Graham is officially announced death as his blood was found on a crime scene, but Jack Crawford has no intention of discontinuing the investigation as he is persuaded Will Graham is still alive. Meanwhile his most praised detective and the fabled Chesapeake Ripper are anchorites of their private love and learn more about violence and purgationLots of fluff and angst ensues.
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. Tumult

_Gold._

Matter of downright material associations had a particularly metaphysical interpretation to Jack Crawford that afternoon. No corpse has been a source of striking evocations like this one and eerily it seemed to him as a clarification for something he already dealt with. The motive, the setting, the hideously spruced up presentation looked relatively much of a muchness. The decades of experience in the behavioural science unit taught him steadfastness and to gravitate his thoughts whenever scatterbrained or triggered by the exhibitions of violence. This time was not any different—he took a big belly breath and took the indigo-coloured folder one of the agents in charge gave him, a nattily-clad male who took the place of the previous trainee. 

The recent replenishment of crimes, each one following deadening to mercy, had climaxed altogether in the murder of clergyman who fronting to the Ripper’s methods did not have any organs missing and furthermore faced the shrine of the church, unexposed as the epicentre of the slaughter, but rather the spectator. Jack leaned to inspect the object tied in his hand—a scale of golden nuggets careering under the stream of air.

‘For someone who tends to avoid me like the plague, you were quick to call.’

Jack’s face dropped at the sight of Freddie Lounds’s equipment, the tabloid journalist had made a bunch of low-quality photos with a Polaroid camera by the time the disgruntled man proceed to convey his disagreement.

‘Are those believable?’ she gave him the photos and he caught dangerous mockery in the gesture. ‘Does your division stand in need of better pictures for you to realize this was the feast of Hannibal Lecter and his so-called apprentice?’

‘This rampage of recklessness finals right now,’ he affirms, half-rebuking and half-denying. ‘It is advisable that you went home and left the case to us. If you are that bloodthirsty to misconduct with the media your readers consume, go film something about the pothole repairs!’

Despite stultified, she felt even more compelled and challenged to do the opposite, ‘Then have a talk with your newest trainee, he has been following some of my most scandalous articles of late and personally suggested that I came.'

Jack’s anger amplified, skimming through the useless paragraphs of information into the folder and itching on the inside to interrogate her further. Strolling to the pulpit he handed her the folder, glaring about.

‘From where does your conviction stems?’ he asked; flashlights melting into the solemnity of the background, the clergyman’s Golgotha was settled over the grim benches and the finesse of his crucifixion was lying in the inarguable details of a redemption sought through this murderer. As much as Jack loathed admitting, Freddie may be correct when it came to Dr Lecter’s interference.

‘There is a camera outside which caught a janitor who crossed the permissible limits. Not only hadn’t he skipped a day of selling candles and dusting, but his usual appearance has caught his face. He came every day. He reminds me of certain someone, does he not?’ Will Graham. ‘The liquidation of the poor priest reeks of Will Graham's DNA—hairs, nails and blood has been found and if your team infers them of being his, we both know what that implies.’

Jack straightened his back, a strain of chagrin to his voice, ‘In all its likelihood, Will Graham is either a murderer or dead.’


	2. Creation

Hannibal gave him a child—surrogacy of a daredevil and a womb of unpredictability. He found his little lamb to be as recalcitrant as a problematic adolescent and yet, as clever as one could be. Those opposing poles, allegories of evil and angelic are counterparts in his character which namely made him a subject to the psychiatrist’s rollicking observations.

He watched over him after the fall—dawdling flightily to that scurvy church and seeking security akin to pious illusions. At some point, Hannibal went to the same place where Will worked, thinking about Mischa and crying his heart out or regaining his temperance. When the reoccurring ritual had become tedious, the shepherd decided to bring his sheep home, lest this undomesticated yeanling escaped again. Those miscellaneous faces of Will Graham were fascinating, _tasty_ and virgin, the bad and good, apocalypse and chaos, love and hatred unable to concur within the surface of his consciousness. Engrossing himself into the dualities, Will would find a duality, a twin of his aversion towards him, mayhap some tiny shard of fondness. 

There must be duality for his unfulfilled affection and Hannibal is interested to get there, no matter how much time and efforts it will take. 

Attached to the axis of two-sided feelings, Will Graham tried to achieve universal knowledge of forgiveness and peace; but eventually had to come in terms with his inability to outgrow himself and return to his usual role of the marionette of self-renunciation, painstaking lack of awareness and loneliness. He is oneness of discrepancies—Faust’s continuous pursuit of knowing. Knowing Hannibal, knowing himself, knowing how to overcome the queer type of love he felt emerging out of the blue.

It was specifically this type of thinking that put him in this position—defenceless and fatigues even after sleeping.

‘Did you sleep well, Will?’ Hannibal’s lips rhythmically moved as Will tried to fathom out what he was saying.

That could not be his apartment—not judging by the interior. William could not afford having harpsichord at the corner of his living room or stygian-dark bedding inveigling him into the familiar cologne. There had been moments when he would go home besotted, slip out of his clothes, shower and eat leftovers of pasta while watching hypocritical crime series which depicted none of the realities happening offscreen. This environment here is opulent and sophisticated—and thus, this is Hannibal.

Therefore, he light-headedly concludes, he must have been kidnapped.

The prominence of peril in his tympanic voice amplified the detective’s anxiety, ‘I asked you for reckoning last evening,’ Will slurred. ‘After the fall you dared to save my life and I pleaded you to just end this vicious cycle of agony for me, didn’t I? What made you think I was not serious?’

‘I took your invocation very seriously,’ Hannibal reassures, running his fingers through the sweat-laden curls of Will’s hair. ‘You are dead. The appearance of your obituaries in the newspapers might confound you at first, but I can guarantee the sumptuousness of your funeral shall leave your co-workers open-mouthed.’

Will levelled himself up, utterly stupefied by Hannibal’s narration, ‘Acknowledging I killed people while you gaslit me and pulled my strings made me realise you stripped me off my right for balance. Look at me,’ he pointed at the missing part of his ear and other endurable scars; but obliterating himself with insults did not rally the other’s mood. ‘I am dysfunctional and the burden of owning you something, anything at all, is worse than death itself.’

‘It hurt me as you do not appreciate the fact that I resuscitated you after we fell. Nevertheless, it hurt me even more knowing I had to show you how harrowing leaving me was,’ his augment of appetite emanated from the pair of chase eyes, unsuspecting of the verdict oncoming. Such gratification made Hannibal’s gut turn with possessiveness and the back of his eyes fill with tears of relief. ‘You are dead. The crime scene of last night will be a moment until discovered, unless someone had decided to attend to his wrongdoings this morning. They will see your death in someone else’s perdition. Meanwhile you will be with me.’

‘Unfair,’ Will protested. ‘My looks is horrendous, I look unacceptably nasty to society’s standards. There was no hope lingering in here for me,’ he pointed at his ribcage, heart shuddering like gunned down butterfly. ‘I asked you to bring balance.’

‘Didn’t I? You are technically gone for society if is that is what you worry about. I refuse to convince myself that a man who lived in fear of losing control and therefore inhibit a singular room in the middle of nowhere is particular on what society thinks about him, howbeit. Hadn’t it been for that earnest physiognomy of yours, I would have credited your staid naivety for making you believe death can save you from our relationship.’

Panic settles in—Will began disagreeing in monosyllables and his heart rate was skittering, body convulsing with helplessness and exertion. Hannibal hasn’t been so susceptible to manipulation in anyone else’s companionship. Will’s ache was his ache and what disheartened him about the bespectacled man was that he did not share Hannibal’s happiness—the elder was high in spirits knowing Will was at his care, but the younger lamented and cried about losing touch with the world which did not provide the equipoise he demanded.

‘You have back injury from the fall, I am glad you did not suffer spinal cord injuries,’ he said.

‘Are they not offering innuendo about my sedentary lifestyle?’ at last, Will was becoming calmer, parasympathetic hormones padded through his system. Hannibal’s chameleonesque gaze wafts and drifts to the streaming teacup.

‘We will change it, you should not worry about anything. Now that I am the only person aware of your physical existence we should establish rules and have you recovering quickly. Do you think you could handle breakfast?’ almost courteously he placed some peeled off tangerine oranges and apples into Will’s lap and touched his hands and hair tenderly making the experience somniferous and hardly satiable. ‘Would you like me to bring something into the room for your entertainment?’

‘Can I get a TV?’ asked Will.

‘It is high time you moved on from your scandalous disappearance. Would seeing your colleagues and acquaintances say pretended sentimentalities in front of camera add any value to your life?’

Will swallowed his bite and decided to wind up his confrontation as it surely was not the way of getting himself out of Hannibal’s suffocating infatuation. Those acts of defiance are oftentimes akin to underlying resentment and making them obvious does not give him any precedence. Some questions will remain impolite, such as his and Hannibal’s relationship and others like the syringes he incidentally forgot on the crime scene may even put Will’s survival into questioning.

‘My life wasn’t a sensation and it won’t be even after my pseudo murder,’ he reassures. ‘I want to see them suspecting you. Understanding the real you and giving the truth to everyone who lost a special someone because of you.’

‘You are as obsessed as I am about you and that does not surprise me, my dear Will. Do you not mind living with your scars even in death?’

Will almost panted, ‘Scarring does not matter for you opened up wounds which are so morbid that even physical death avoids me when seeing your hands all over my past.’

Hannibal’s upper lip quirked in a chucklesome expression, ‘My hands will be over your future as well, my darling.’


	3. Dissection

By fair means of four, Hannibal Lecter was determined to change the door name plate to something unerring to describe his practices. Abhorrent quotations came to him such as _“licensed carnage”_ , while ambling down the corridor past his previous office to meet physiotherapist a patient of his recommended. Due to his deviant way of living after the fall, he feared to step into his specialization once again and especially with his new asset at home, that would be particularly unattainable. Having Jack Crawford knock upon his door and storm in asking where he had taken Will Graham and threatening him in false accusations seemed to be the last thing he would yen for. As if he would intend harming his counterpart ever! 

‘Dr Lecter, I delighted in the idea of your appearance. You may come in,’ a comely women, thirty of age, greeted him zealously.

‘The pleasure shall be entirely mine taking your reputation into consideration. You helped a patient of mine in complete corporal torpor—he was solicitous enough to hear me out and recommend me your services. May I ask for some help regarding a relative of mine?’

Hannibal sat in the presidential armchair making a remark of the woman’s voluptuous attire and superfluous skirt. The office was somehow a tumbledown and partly infantile with the plushette figures around the computer—she smiled gingerly, a shelf of wines at the background.

‘Drinking on duty is less than professional.’

‘I am a connoisseur, not an addict,’ she curtly interjected between fixing her collar and crossing her legs over the swirly chair. ‘What is your relative dealing with, Dr Lecter? Is it by chance the popular association of yours, Will Graham?’

He merely hid his surprise hearing she is abreast to the facts. Allegedly, nobody is to know the details around the fall or Will’s recovery afterwards. Bearing in mind she knew Will suffered linked her work with the most recent case in the church, namely the kernel of the abduction. The tilt of his head indicated keenness, the fist of his hand forming a cohesive amalgamation of impatience and brusquely ascending anger.

He pointed a ragged, badly stitched scar on the top of his brow, passionless and still untouched by her effrontery. ‘Since the accident you may have heard of, I have not seen or heard anything from Will,’ he dejectedly announced—reaping the hours Will have left, now being under the custody of his undefined and timeless care. 

‘Pardon my intrusiveness, a colleague of mine is assisting the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Will Graham’s blood has been all over the place! There is not a shred of evidence that someone else beside the victim and him went to the church that day, nor did the additional testimony prove so.’

‘Doesn’t that classify him as a target, rather than executioner?’

‘Will Graham has never been unimpeachable; being a copybook psychopath does not exonerate him from guilt.’ 

She typed something over her the keyboard for a moment; but after Hannibal’s glare she must had sworn something androgynously twisted was watching her from afar. The fax machine made a sound varying from low and high as datum was encoded in the jump between frequencies. How many people are there down the passageway? Would someone bother find her in water tank nowhere neat the townlights? Hannibal let possibilities acquiesce in his sadistic thoughts, because he is supposed to show abstinence and not murder someone out of peevishness. Undoing his top buttons, right by his throbbing carotid, goosebumps tickled involuntarily reminding him of what he'd do to anyone giving a piece of their mind to his Will. 

‘Well, Dr Lecter,’ her voice was exasperatedly tinny now, ‘could you give me some information about your relative’s state and I will make sure to pay them a visit for a physical examination and thus, appoint a therapy according to his needs?’

‘I am currently taking care of him at my residence,’ Hannibal said. ‘So we both would rather have you over for dinner.’

///

Apart from the sinister invitation, Dr Lecter summons no other interaction throughout the afternoon and arrived back to his quarters with voracious appetite strong enough to make him ravish the uncooked livers, securely packaged and stored away from outsider’s awareness downstairs. Going home included witnessing the ineptness of Will’s attempt to thrash his way to freedom—Hannibal governed his lusty desire to make no remoter concessions about his place in the psychiatrist’s underworld. Will had to be goaded into conflict with those thinking he was a cherub of decency and rapport for notorious reptiles, but Hannibal was responsible to score out this barefaced lie and make Will’s antipathy towards him atrophy.

Do not get fooled—his work with Will Graham was complementary, despite the frictions formed throughout the dynamic of animosity and gregariousness, love and hatred, dying and creating. The detective captures the quintessence of insanity, a breakable teacup was as elementary to put back together as filling it with the hotness, dolour and succulence of its own empathy. The end result was a sublime gift to the doctor, something beautiful he had created out of illusions and anguish. 

Will Graham was his own advanced creation, which had its own mechanism—and going home proved Hannibal that the way Will’s brain operates is more efficacious than his measures against the detective’s possible escape. 

Entering the spacious kitchen Hannibal caught a whiff of something unmistakable—after all, he lied about everything, from the foul ingredients in his menu to what he actually did for living and this was the scent of the only thing that raised the real Hannibal Lecter from the ashes. The dining room reeked of death. He did not spare a second to even rinse his hands or take off his coat as his very instinctive reaction was to check if it was Will’s blood smeared around his furniture, though there wasn’t a cell in his body supporting that unsightly guessing.

The bad smell escalated into pulseless warning right at the door and he opens it, skin growing pale and a pounding sensation anchored in his chest.

‘Good evening, Hannibal,’ said Will, the door revealing his otherworldly beauty.

On the table was sprawled the physiotherapist’s body and needlessly did Hannibal reach for her wrist—she was already gone.

‘She must have had sinned multiply for you to do this to her, Will. I know you would not harm a civilian. How’d you know I would come home hungry, darling?’

‘One treadle stirs a thousand of threads,’ laconically amended the younger and circumvented the table, tapping over the mahogany with his fingertips.

‘There is one authentic measure for art which does not rob us of authenticity, emancipation and knowledge. Intimacy fuels the soul and to a touch-starved person like you, it will nourish your whole being,’ he brushed his hair aside, thumbing over his forehead. ‘My sweet Will, what made you believe I will not feel accountable for the cruelties you committed?’

‘You ought to feel accountable. I killed for you, because you admire the devil,’ Hannibal’s eyes sparkled. ‘Each of my victims will lead to your residence and soon Jack Crawford will permeate your skull with lead and copper. Isn’t it mortifying seeing me empathize with the worst kind of mentality, but never see eye to eye with the man whom you sigh for.’

Will Graham was having a murderous episode and yet managed to commingle the other’s intentions. ‘Very much, I find it incredibly painful. What disappoints me more is that you are turning into something ignoble.’

‘You worship the evil, you baptize the unethical and preach my becoming,’ Will said, inching from Hannibal’s lips. ‘Of course taking me from you will be painful. I’m your duality and without you I’m the evil and the good, but without me, you will be short of any attachments and faith.’

‘Nothing could take my religion, unless it permits that.’

‘Exactly.’

Regardless of Will’s agility to bring the body in here, it must require a couple of hours sleep afterwards, as the road down Hannibal’s residence is bumpy and murky, for the evening starless and animals hardly recognizable. This struggle has tired him out—Hannibal drinks the expression imbued with somnolence and his clothes crumbled from the chase, he needs to run him a bath urgently, but those are boundaries only yet to be negotiated.

After a while Will finally spoke again, having the other’s unwavering attentiveness and weathered hands over his own, fine-grit sandpaper palms which peeled from the excessive washing. Such an obsessively-compulsive tendency of his appeased Will, whose heartbeat did not quicken when ending a life, but his mind raced knowing blood strained his careworn arms. A different type of exhaustion tinted his words, one of existential conflict and one of disturbed duality.

He took Hannibal’s hand and gave him an utility knife, nodding his head in sad matter.

‘Do it,’ he said, ‘this is my desire and you comply by your devil’s wishes.’

With clattering breathing and total tiredness, Will’s body completely rested over the table expecting his final demise, but instead he felt someone else’s warm blood trickle over him and something far more vulnerable than the evil, whimpering his name softly in impuissant and clipped breaths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might begin doing longer chapters,
> 
> hope you had a good read! :D


	4. Evolution

Figuring out Hannibal’s masochistic and yet implicit proclivities wasn’t a main priority after being abducted—nothing was, in fact. Will wished to have zero in common with the doctor and ignored major topics he brought up and whatnot. Having his hand clutching the knife to the point of blood dripping down the tiles was, however, shaping something around Will’s sense of guilt and it almost felt like shooting Garret Jacob Hobbs, delving a bullet deep into his ungainly gait and ghostly eyes a tad bit too intent in their vigilance.

Having Hannibal’s hand grapple the sharpened, perfectly serviceable blade, impelled a sense of belittlement in the younger and instinctively he pulled the knife resulting in more blood spilling in all directions, divulging the impending apprehension and misting his sight with fear. He couldn’t lose the only flower left on his spurious grave, he couldn’t effort inflicting more pain than he has already had.

‘Will,’ said Hannibal leniently.

The flashback takes him to hot blood bouncing off snow because of the huge temperature gap; stag’s antlers rooting over bare skin.

‘Will,’ he tried again, this time with more demand.

‘No, It’s alright, I’m really sorry,’ he took the nearest, yet most absorbent appearing towel and applied great pressure over his hand, considering if he may need to stitch the wound; and then dismally sighed, acknowledging he lacked any basic understanding of how to perform such procedure. ‘I am sorry, I can’t stitch this up and I am not sure if it even requires that,’ he floundered on tenterhooks, lamenting about.

‘Will, only speaking without listening shapes great greed.’

‘I have taken this too far, I’m sorry Hannibal.’

Relief and jubilation pooled in Hannibal’s chest knowing Will pronounces his name without unnecessary rancor. He moved Will’s fingers, already white-knuckled from clutching the towel and fisted his own hand, more blood pumping in and out. Will brazenly returned his hand back to the towel and his childlike expression switched to seriousness, guilt evaporating, blood falling to his Italian shoes.

‘Forgive me, please,’ he implored, ‘I can’t stand the thought of someone else putting you in so much pain and yet I dared to test you. It’s very complicated to break loose from the norms I practiced barely a week ago and holding myself from murdering you until I know how to handle this!’ he shook his head again, feeling uncoordinated and glutted with hesitation. ‘I will try not to let this happen again.’

Hannibal saw undeniable sincerity in Will’s confusion—the outcome brought anxieties stronger than the metallic scent conjoining them in the middle of the dining room, but there was a chance of him relenting to his gentleness and maybe, letting the preconceptions after their fall burn. 

‘We are essentially predisposed to live in illusions. The totality of our beliefs and experiences is fabricated, sold and biased as to make the knowledge we are capable of only the edge of what is real,’ he stroke Will’s cheek, menacing smile surfacing. ‘You choose not to see and live through what is undefined, you refuse to be capsulated and dreading the unpreventable. If you never saw again, would that make you know me or yourself better?’

‘I’m not inclined to wisdom, but I know some extremely intelligent people, falling from that edge of duality and living in never forgathering extremities,’ he pauses and swallows, closing his eyes. ‘I was left to ask what made you like this, when I should have asked myself if my savagery is what was needed to balance that distorted extremity of yours.’

‘I beg to differ; your judgement is very distinctive. Wouldn’t you rather see people obeying your reasoning than never falling off that edge again, dear Will?’ 

Then he takes the topic to a different direction, involuntarily rubbing Hannibal's hands into his own, ensuring no more blood spills. 

‘I admit of being incapable of stitching your hand, before you disagree I must say we should get someone to do this on my behalf. I will not get them to locate us for now or report you to Jack and I’ll try my best to be there so they don’t injure you further.’

‘Just a graze, darling. Would you be so kind to run us a bath?’

More worries spawned and hence, Will decided not to perpetuate a conversation where Hannibal’s feelings are excluded. Yes; the detective is awfully apt to being manipulated, emotionally tossed and mentally brainwashed that he prefers figuring out his own adulation towards the doctor privately to engaging into Hannibal’s ploys. He leaves the bloodied knife to the sink in the kitchen and takes Hannibal to the bathroom running him a bath, simultaneously searching how he is supposed to do stitches at home safely.

Meanwhile Hannibal gloats over the thin scar Dolarhyde left over his beloved cheek, drinking the irrecoverable defacement. The gesture is well accepted—Will almost sighs pleasurably against Hannibal’s hand while being too concerned with what he was reading. At this point, Hannibal’s hand feels numbed and warm, tracing over the soapy water and luxuriating into the man’s profile. Once he thought loving to be in control is the only lifelong romance recuperating his memories, but Will’s did so as well—affection is a murderous type of freedom that is known to stunt wickedness and open clemency. He hopes, to a halt, that Will isn’t going to assault the compassion he held for him as that was the supper of soulful and intimate sustenance.

_Yes,_ those feelings are an hourglass—but for his rationality’s emptiness, his heart would never fill.

‘Alright, time is up,’ said Will, ‘the water is getting too cold.’

Hannibal bandages his own hand demonstrating Will attentively—the younger’s heart is bilious seeing someone so beloved being a mannequin and furthermore allowing this to happen on his watch. When the other is ready, Will pulled out additional blanket and left the bed-lighting turned on, ambient breaths evening out. Hannibal enjoys keeping company with someone so spectacularly spellbinding even when the younger wasn’t saying anything at all. The doctor lets his standoffishness retire for a moment when the other permit himself to touch him.

‘Is this good?’ Will wonders in near-whisper, smile never faltering. In contact, his skin is bed-warm and Hannibal's silent benediction asked earnestly to never feel his Will's touch cold and distant, aching or crying for him. 

‘Much.’

Will’s self-esteem faced a major setback due to his disfiguring wounds—the whetted warp of his ear remind him of insufferable shame, the back wounds of his deficiency in being physically active and the stab over his cheek had the strongest linger—that of devotion and care which is the hardest to satisfy. Something about Hannibal, something akin to loving, made him feel more alive than he should have presently.

‘You should sleep now, I will leave the lights on,’ he said, looking into the little greying hairs over the other’s arm and inevitably dilated pupils, deposing to suggesting attraction.

‘Stay for a while.’

‘The couch in the basement isn’t any worse, bunch of spiders smoking on dust and grime,’ Will laughs, patting Hannibal’s hand one last time.

He accesses the door, stopping right before closing it and looks at the other beseechingly, a glare so assertive and yet fearful, that Hannibal saw nothing but a rabbit trying his best to be courageous. His palms are clammy around the doorknob and soon he regains aplomb to ask.

‘You wouldn’t leave this time?’

Hannibal tilted his head sideways in redundant mockery, his eyes are heavy-lidded but Will swore his carotid was pulsing staccato. Will is his appendage so who was he to prevent him from staying right where he belonged? 

‘That’s the last thing I’d act on. Don’t worry, my love.'

The same evening several things happened—Hannibal had a collection of golden memories with Will that he played until falling asleep, each reimbursed for the heartache he experienced while parted. On the other hand, Jack received a daunting call in the middle of the night, which led to him to going straight to the investigation without any proper clothes on and without his service pistol. Hadn’t it been for the truculent officer yelling nonsense in two in the morning, he wouldn’t have driven with the emergency blinkers for thirty minutes and a flat tyre, perhaps damaged by the provincial vandals.

Upon arriving he heard what he turned down at first—that there is a new victim and most likely, Will Graham's _death_ is a fact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	5. Cessation Of Willfulness

Spirally spun goldenness put Jack Crawford in lassitude following only the river’s streaming waters and a profound tang of mowed lawn. _Is that what Will Graham regularly sees when dissociating?_ Woodpecker picking over the bark in the whereabouts, the sound preamble to ferocity; or moss-covered stones resisting the strong current, trying to render the massacre unavoidable. The virgin mentality wouldn’t relate to something so aberrantly bad, which made Jack consider if there was something innately good at all about Will’s ability still loitering. Unfortunately, he saw nothing but the layered cake of gold, blood, teacups and the man who leeched the authenticity of Will’s face. Great crimes require great foundation—and knowing Will’s, Jack couldn’t help but feel twice as enraged thinking about Hannibal entering the investigation once. 

His colleagues gave him looks. Condolence-specked and disembodied nods of their heads leading to his team and inspecting a battered body which to Jack’s percipience seemed unidentifiable. The spite-tingling revelation of the corpse’s spine and few ribs left gave Jack some doddering hopes, that were beset by Jimmy’s compulsively scary voice speaking right behind him.

‘Only the spine and the ribs, partly the pelvis and some nugatory leftovers of flesh,’ he said, putting his rubbery boots.

‘Is it Will Graham’s body?’

‘That is what we are trying to exclude as an option,’ he sighed, ‘but I fear the blood spluttered around is his.’

Fire is being detained in Jack’s lungs—arson kindled by Hannibal’s matchstick of ruthlessness, now left him a nuance of despair best put with a frosting of gasoline, suffocating and killing everything signalling for Will’s existence. His team continued working and he looked around for anything making the death of Will Graham a mistake, but nothing came up.

‘The height is of a female,’ Jack tried.

‘Or average in height male,’ Jimmy said. ‘Will was of average height. You must think him a god surviving after losing forty-five percents of his total blood volume! This matter does not pertain to what we wish, Jack. You know it better than I do.’

‘How long until you identify the body?’

‘Unobtainable for our lab, there is acid used to moulder the tissues,’ his gloved hand inspected. ‘We cannot identify the body, but if the blood is Will’s and no one else has been here, he is most like dead.’

Jack stepped in, inspecting the semblance of lower jaw, charred and stifling in touch. ‘The row of teeth is missing! The main sources of identification—the fingerprints, the teeth, the legs are missing! How is that not made up to you?’

‘If someone wants the world to think Will Graham is gone, then he is doing a spectacular job!’ Jimmy said defensively. ‘Provided this isn’t him and he is free at the moment, last night it was only him who has staged this. He is not inhumane—if not the other person, then adrenaline must have prevented him from double-checking if his companion left evidences. There are none and therefore there was nobody with him.’

Jack Crawford needed time to digest Jimmy’s speculation and somehow find equivalence in his own. One astounding detail was the gold shimmering from underneath the water’s surface, fancy bait for red-herring or embellishment, an offer for the one who once brought justice in Hannibal’s life.

‘Say cheesy!’ Incongruous voice said and a snap of pictures followed; of course that was Freddie having Will’s remains debut on her website and Jack’s maddened face making a perfect headline.

_Bad cop catching the dead fish._

////

Hannibal’s hand had gotten quite better. Staying cocooned in limewash walls and hoary bandages had no appeal to him—part of him wanted to teleport to Will at his behest and the other one knew no qualms having Will served, teleported, delivered right to his threshold.

The younger left last evening and with impending worry, Hannibal did not find him in the morning. He roused with rapacious appetite for Will’s sight, sleeping soundlessly in the tapestry sofa or reading away his thoughts down in the basement. With huge interest he found the body from the kitchen table missing, the surface wiped immaculately. The tip of his finger scraped the vapid and bovine brownness of the table, acknowledging the lack of Will’s blood stored downstairs that he collected on intervals through sterile syringes. In case of emergency, bearing in mind his and Will’s blood types were different, he must have a sack ready.

It was around half past eight when he heard familiar trotting to the front door and did not even need a signal to know it was Will, belatedly shuffling thorough his pocket’s content in order to find his keys. Eager to meet him home, Hannibal opened the door seeing the corollary of another terrible episode Will must have had and despondently brought him in, poor creature swivelling confusedly as if this wasn’t his home. Hannibal’s mind races—to some extend he fights the proneness of devouring this sweet thing right where he was, sides burning up like rosebush in midsummer and speech slurred just as if he spent the night poisoning his system with muscatel sherry wine and didn’t bury a woman merely hours ago.

On the other hand, similarly to his professional ethics, situations required certain restrictions. Interrogating Will upon his romantic desires towards him is a tad too intentional and baleful, so he preferred sleeping the tension away and questioning him in the morning. He settled him downstairs in his special room, glancing over his darnels and thistle decked feet and quickly took a towel to scrub them, tucking him in a shirt from yesterday’s laundry. Will’s eyes are distrait and liquid in the dark, miles away from the intimate gesture Hannibal was performing and yet he tried his best to imperil the silence.

‘Don’t stay anything, I’m not mad with you, darling,’ the information is cumbersome enough for Will to handle, so Hannibal uses short and manageable sentences, but not meagre of meaning. ‘I’d be very grateful if you are to tell me who you are and where you are.’

Will’s toes curled reflexively in his hand, looking into the stark dreariness outside. He expected sirens, Jack coming in and shooting through Hannibal’s blurred front and then the dull of a psych ward cell will be everything left to bore his eyes into, everything he had to dwell upon and remember dearly. Of course, Will couldn’t let that happen—he loved Hannibal too late despite him loving him too early and now was his only chance to repair this miscalculation.

‘Will,’ Hannibal pushed his curls back, hand tracing up and down his arm. ‘Please?’

‘I am nobody. I killed Mrs Turner and stole the blood you took from me and made her body look like mine. The incident will convince Jack I am dead.’

Hannibal pursed his lips tightly together, revealing eyes full of conflicted adoration and a steady sadness building in. ‘A nobody is a spiteful decree, Will. The parishioner repenting may still belong to god, who will a nobody belong to then?’

The supposition was tricky and purposeful, Will’s sense of safety must have left him on his way through the woods, despite the unrelenting crime committed earlier on. The answer his got, however, made Hannibal hold his hand with herculean force, planting an unconscious kiss on top of it.

‘To you,’ he gritted, ‘a sheep.’

‘If I were to ask why you killed her, would you imagine my death, yours or perhaps an appeal to stay and preserve the place you’ve grown to think is yours?'

‘She said I’m ugly,’ he made Hannibal start, a hand resting and playing with the fabric of the elder’s shirt. ‘That you are overburdened seeing me every day and that I am departed to the netherworld. She provoked me to think less of myself when all I’ve been doing was to foolishly put you on pedestal. Whatsoever, I can choose what to trigger me and what not to, her provocation wasn’t my pardoning to be a fiend,’ he pauses, ‘it was you.’

‘I daresay my appearance in your life shouldn’t be an excuse or a reason for anything bestial.’

‘It is everything,’ at last, Will spoke in hushes tones and found some comfort within the pile of blankets, making Hannibal renege on his words and resign into contemplation, trying to fathom out how did Will exactly performed this and is there a barricade of hatred towards him that is left to be destroyed.

‘Sleep, my love,’ he said at him, the younger prodding his head to the finesse of gentle scratches and touches, hand shrunken from the rapid weight-loss and constant worrying. ‘I will not leave your side or be compassionate to anyone demanding otherwise. When you wake up, my love for you shall be reciprocated and your goodbyes gone from my recollection. _Oh,_ you erase the annihilating fears of mine so well that I think you may not be real.’

He sprawled his hand straight over to Will’s chest, closing the space between until he isn’t so close that his being aches to connected into the same body, share the same cells, exchange dread and gore and kiss as if he is kissing the cold surface of a mirror nobody had ever had the courage to look into.

The tranquillity is only fraudulent as his phone rang; a bit out of the blue considering it was after midnight. He made sure to pull the blanket tightly around Will, watchfully inspect his chest rise and fall, give him a slight peck and leave the room urgently, answering the unforeseen caller.

‘Hello, who am I talking to?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! I appreciate the kudos so much and I also respond to comments so if you have something to suggest, feel free to do so! :)

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! 
> 
> I am planning to post every day or every other day, but bear with me if I ever skip! I want to apologise in advance for any typos/errors which may made the work harder to read, let me know if there are any! 
> 
> My Instagram is @writer_ivecygnus if anyone is interested in reading poetry :D


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